Two Lane Blacktop

My job, my family, everything. I had this job as a television producer and I walked in the office. What do you mean you don't want to hear about it? It's not my problem. Welcome everybody to the latest episode of That 70s Movie Podcast. I'm your host, Michael A. Cohen, joined by my co-host, Jonathan Kirshner. Jonathan, how are you doing today? Perennially hanging in there. Perennially hanging in there. It's a it's a yeah, that's a consistent theme on the uh 70s movie podcast.

Uh today is a very exciting show for us. Uh, before we get into our our special guest we had with us today, I want to ask you nothing very, very quickly have you seen anything good recently? Very, very quickly, man. Um I don't know. I mean a little slowly. Well, quickly for us could be like five minutes, so in fairness. So I saw two things I wanted to mention because one of them is a surprising omission. I caught up with Body Heat, which I had never seen. I don't know why.

You never saw Body Heat? I never saw it. I think that movie is fantastic. Well, not the first third. I was so irritated with this movie for the first third. I was getting really cranky, but I kind of hung in there, and then it grew on me and grew on me and grew on me, and I ended up liking it very much. But for the first third, I was just shaking my head, wondering, you know, what's going on with all the people who love this movie.

Uh but also I saw raced out to Lexington, Massachusetts to see the new Olivier Assayus, the Wizard of the Kremlin. Because I'm, as you know, a very, very big uh Assayus follower, and I did not love it. I was d thrilled to see it, but I did not love it. But I did to this week score uh uh an Assayus bootleg, his third film.

Um and so I've almost completed, I've almost seen every Assayus film that's out there, and I'm pleased to have seen The Wizard of the Kremlin, but I did have higher hopes for it. So those are the those are the two movies I would flag. You win some, you lose some. You know, this is how it goes sometimes, okay? Uh I will just say for the record, I uh one thing I did this week was I I have since we haven't we haven't been on in a while.

I did go back and watch some of the Soderbergh films I haven't seen after we did sexualized and videotape. I watched The Underneath with Peter Gallagher. Yeah, not bad. Kind of liked it actually. Uh and I saw something else, but I can't remember what it was, which I guess means it wasn't that memorable. And I have been going deep on John Cassavetti's, and just as a little preview for you listeners out there, we are gonna be doing Cassavetti's movie next. Not quite sure which one yet.

We're talking about maybe Mikey and Nicky, maybe Killing of Chinese Bookie, Woman of the Influence. We're gonna do that at some point, but we both have to get psychology prepared for talking about that movie because it is it's a chore. But anyway, enough about this. Let's get into the show today, and we are really excited. We are joined today by Christina Newland, who is with us to talk about the 1971 cult classic Two-Lane Blacktop. Christina, I'm so glad to have you here today. Me too.

I'm so happy to be here remotely that we are, um, and so happy to be talking about this movie. Um in spite of not having a driver's license, I have always loved car culture and Formula One. And um I really love the 70s road movie and all of its various iterations, Vanishing Point, um, even like Steve McQueen's Le Monde, which is a weird movie. Uh so yeah, but Tulane Blacktop stands sort of at the top of the heap for me. Interesting. All right, well, we're gonna get into it.

I want to just quickly say Christina is a freelance film critic, and you can pick up her book she wrote uh on Sophia Coppola, the complete unofficial guide, I assume, to her movies. Not her acting career, I'm guessing. Yes, I think that's right. A chapter by chapter chronological guide to all the great and lesser Sophia movies. Interesting.

Can I I I hate to do this, put you on the spot, but if if you were to recommend to our listeners one Sophia Coppola Coppola film to see, which one would it be? Ooh, yeah, that's hard. Um I have a I have a soft spot for the bling ring, but I wouldn't recommend that people necessarily start there. Um I like Lost in Translation, but maybe not as much as other people do. Yeah. So I would go with The Virgin Suicides, maybe her first film. That'd be my that'd be my vote as well, I think.

Uh I think and as we discussed before we went on the air, I th we we think that she qualifies as a 70s style uh director. So uh we could maybe we'll do a film of her at some point. We as I we said before many times, 70s the credo of his podcast is that not every 70s film was made in the 70s, but today's film was made in the 70s, and we're gonna talk about it now.

Two-lane blacktop, a 1971 cult classic about two straight racers named The Driver and the Mechanic, who traveled the country racing the 1965, excuse me, the 1955, Chevrolet 150, an encounter a female hitchhiker and a GTO driver along the way, and Chaos Does Not Ensue. Um, so that's a little tagline we do all the time. I always say chaos ensues, because that's often what happens in these movies, not this one.

Uh, this uh was directed by Monty Hellman, screenplay by Rudolf Wurlitzer and Will Corey. Uh it stars James Taylor, Warren Oates, Lori Byrd, and Dennis Wilson, cinematography by Jack Dearson and Gregory Sander, edited by Monty Hellman. And we've come to the point in the show that everyone looks forward to. It's the most exciting moment. Jonathan, I'm putting you on the spot. Tulane Blacktop. Is this a good movie? Is this a bad movie, or is this a great movie?

And as I do more than half the time, I'm gonna going off the menu uh and talking a little bit about why I settle on the word I'm going to settle for. Tulane Blacktop is, I think, an essential movie. Uh Ooh, that is some back-handed praise right there. I can feel it coming. I I looked at my notes, and the last time I saw it before I watched it again for our podcast was with friend of the podcast, Heather Hendershott. We spoke with her about Nashville, and she wrote the BFI book on Nashville.

You should all race out and buy it if you haven't already from listening to our podcast previously. And she projected it uh onto the back wall, a big white wall she had in her backyard, and we watched it while sipping wine in a warm summer evening five years ago. And, you know, she insisted that we watch it, and all the cool kids love this movie. Jim Oberman loves this movie, Jonathan Rosenbaum loves this movie, Richard Brodie loves this movie.

And so I really respect this movie as obviously an essential part of this movement. It is also probably the most significant movie directed by Monty Hellman, who I think is enmeshed in our kind of 70s film culture. But yes, I do have a qualifier. As you know, my my stock phrase is you know, do I have an emotional relationship with this movie? You know, do I think about it? And and I've kind of personally, you know, this is a movie that's important to me.

It's part of my soul, and when I watch it, I'm just kind of caught up uh in my own feelings. And it doesn't, it it does not reach that threshold for me. So I'm bifurcated here. I really respect this movie as an essential element of the of the era that we're so interested in, but I've never personally been able to kind of love it, although as we'll talk about over the next hour or so, there are lots and lots and lots of things about it that I admire greatly.

Okay, that's a that's a pretty good answer right there, I gotta say, uh Jonathan. But you know who does love this movie? Our guest today, Christina Newland. She loves this movie because she recommended them talk about it today. Christina, Tulane Blacktop. Good movie, bad movie, or great movie. I I love this movie so sincerely, with my whole heart. It's it's a great movie.

Um but I get what what you're saying, Jonathan, in that there are so many movies that I respect and admire, but don't love in my heart in that kind of gooey way. And this is not a movie that engenders gooey feelings, really. It's intentionally distancing. It's, you know, the characters, and you could even argue the actors are intentionally kind of affectless and a little bit wooden, non-professionals. Um, it leaves you kind of uh TBC, really, by the ending.

It's it's extremely um ambiguous in that very, very wonderful kind of BBS style early 70s way. Um but for me it's it's getting right down to the heart of this directionlessness in American life, in masculinity, and I think in all of us, really, this idea that, you know, um that that great quote of um Warren Oates saying, I'm fast enough, and James Taylor's character, the driver saying, It's never fast enough.

Yeah that to me is the there's something about like the hollowness, I guess, of that feeling, the sense that there will always be something to outrage you, to have more horsepower, right? And that's that's masculinity and it's capitalism, but it's also life. Uh that's that was a great answer, actually, I gotta say. You made me actually think a little more highly of the film than I did before. That's a great comic. I gotta say. That's very impressive.

Um Well, I wanted to ask you this question because I know that we we reached out to you, we wanted you to have you have you on the podcast, and you recognize this film. No, no, that's your rewriting history. Oh, am I reeling? I'm sorry. Christina suggested another film that we're eventually going to do, I probably just the two of us, but I saw that this was on Christine's sight and sound ballad of the 10 greatest movies of all time.

And because I have this strange relationship with this film, which is that I kind of respect it and admire it, but don't love it, I was just so excited to have a conversation with, you know, uh someone I admire uh uh who who values the movie so highly that I I kind of nudged her toward the So she didn't impose this on us, I imposed this on her. Well, thank you for blowing up the question I was about to ask, actually. But I'll try to figure out a way to redo this.

Uh well, I guess I'm curious, from your perspective, this was on your site and sound list. What is it about this movie that screams 70s new Hollywood filmmaking to you? Like what is it about? Is there something that is this movie for you sort of emblematic of 70s filmmaking? In many ways, I think, yes, because there's this combination of uh interest in Americana and sort of genre in this motorhead culture, right?

This obsession that has been existent in American culture since I mean before the 1950s, but certainly since the 1950s. Um and this kind of weird moment that America is poised on in the early 70s, where it's just before the OPEC oil crisis. It's a point where the American motor vehicle has reached the end of its supremacy in many ways, or starting to reach the end. And we look back now, we think about the muscle car and we think of this great nostalgic time, but things things were tough.

Um, you know, it goes without saying, really, in the early 70s. Yeah. It was it was a difficult era, yeah. It was it was a tricky, tricky moment.

And I think the film v in in a very poetic and loose and ambiguous way, never direct, um plays with the cross-cultural wars that are happening, the long hair versus the square, the kind of generation gap stuff going on, the concern about consumer culture in the character of GTO and the way he kind of fetishizes the car, um this kind of torpor in in American society, and particularly amongst American men who were out of work, there was an economic downturn, the war was going on.

So you have all these kinds of things that aren't directly in the movie, but I think that you can read very, very easily into you know, you can feel the the the disaffection and the discomfort kind of rising from the blacktop.

You know, the backstory of this movie is sort of fascinating because um well before it came out it was previewed in Esquire magazine, which re which published the entire screenplay from the movie, which by the way just couldn't have been that long, is based on the same movie, actually. Um It really couldn't be. Uh and they said it was the best movie of the year.

Uh and uh the movie came out and it completely bombed, in part because uh I I forget the name of the uh the the studio that that that put it out, but Lou Wasserman, who was the head of the studio at the time, basically hated this movie, absolutely hated it, and did everything he could to kill it uh and to prevent it from getting any attention.

And in fact, Esquire actually ended up publishing something at the end of the year about things that people got wrong, and one of the things they said they got wrong was them saying this was the best movie in 1971. Um so it was kind of out of circulation for a very long time. I I'm sort of curious wh when did you but this is a question to both of you, when did you see this movie for the first time? How did you see it?

And had you sort of heard about this as, oh, this is this great cult classic, underrated movie that no one talks about from the 70s. Well, I can answer, but the my answer is I don't remember. I mean, once I got into the 70s film, this this loomed as a legendary film. And I'm pretty uh determined to track things down, so I bet I found it in VHS form or something like that or at a revival theater somewhere. Um, but it was always part of that kind of mysterious ethos.

And before I see the floor, I want to jump on uh Christina's comments about uh Tulane as a 70s film. It was also a 70s production. So one of the things I admire about this film is, you know, this is this is not just a movie about the road, this is a movie shot on the road, largely in sequence. I'm curious, Christina, if you share this view. You think of all those 70s road movies, and you mentioned Vanishing Point, of course.

This movie reminds me in its production and in its feel, strangely, uh, with Coppola's The Rain people. Yeah, I can I definitely see that. And I mean the obvious the obvious thing people talk about is Easy Rider, right? And that's that's fine. And it, you know, the argument that a lot of the road movies that came after picked up on the whole we blew it thing, that they're they they tend to be very downbeat.

Um but yeah, I think Coppola is I won't say an influence, but certainly contemporary, right, of this. And then you you just have this kind of strange moment, I guess, where Monty Hellman brings in his own influences, which are literary, um, as well as European arthouse, um, Italian irrealists like Armano Olmi, but then the French existentialists.

Uh, and then he comes into this environment uh and this world where where a few years later Ballard's crash comes out, which is this kind of peak of uh vehicular fetishism, right? Which kind of you know literalizes and articulates something about this mindset around um the car as an extension of the dick. So you you know, all of this is at play in this in this movie. Sorry, I got really far from Coppola there. Christina, I'm so glad we had you on the show. I'm already glad.

We're 15 minutes in and I'm overjoyed we had you on. Uh can I ask a question to both of you? Because I this is I'm going off, I'm audible in here. I'm getting to the launch game, and I'm calling a different play. I'm curious about something. The road movie feels like a very American phenomenon because let's face it, we got a lot of roads here, right? More than more than, say, most European countries. Uh what is it about the road movie that is quintessentially American?

I mean, why why why do we why do because I mean I was thinking about this before. There's so many movies you can look at that are sort of road movies. I mean, you could talk about Salman Louise as an obvious, like more sort of more modern example. Um I was listening to a podcast and somebody mentioned Dumb and Dumber, which I guess is kind of a road movie. I hadn't thought about it really, but I guess it kind of qualifies. But there's lots of great road movies out there. What about this one?

And what about America that we sort of do this kind of thing? What is the larger story here about road movies that that that transfix American filmmakers? Trevor Burrus, Jr. Well, the n the nerd answer is that it re reflects kind of the American fetish for the concept of open opportunities.

So you have that endless road and you have that travel and you have that adventure, but it's that it's uh a reimagination of the the frontier spirit of the country that you can kind of hop in your car and go and find something and so search for something or or or what have you. Yeah, I think it's about individualism, you know, one of the key tenets of America's understanding of itself.

It's about self-sufficiency, um, you know, the ability to take oneself anywhere and this kind of manifest destiny thing, as Jonathan is, you know, saying.

Um and so when that kind of idea curdles, um, I mean really if you want to look at it, look at the underside of American car culture and movies, going back to Rebel Without a Cause in the fifties movies, you know, there's this underside of like death and danger, and um even in the most kind of cozy and prosperous environment in America in the 50s or or so called, there's this kind of discomfort, right?

And I think the 70s movies, particularly something like Tulane Blacktop, completely overturn whatever that pride is in American self-sufficiency, in American independence, of the certainty of a future. Um because that's kind of gone here. You know, I think No, but it's interesting you bring that up because I mean it's it's there's two things I would just mention. So the the driver and the mechanic are sort of the main uh characters in the film, right? This is James Taylor and Dennis Wilson.

And we know almost nothing about these characters. We don't know their backstories. I mean, they almost got either way not to tell their backstories. It's almost just like the road is their story and what happens next is their story. And they encountered Warren Oates, who plays the GTO driver as the car he's driving. And he is the complete opposite of these two characters because he tells his backstory, but of course, that backstory is completely made up.

Every scene he's in with every character, he tells a new lie about himself and his background. And I have even mentioned, by the way, the hitchhiker, who they pick up played by Lori Bird, who shows up, just walks into their car. And I mean, so in some ways, each of these characters it represents some element of, I guess, an archetyped in American society. Is that is that a fair way to talk that we describe this film?

Yeah, I think I think it has an element to it of uh, you know, the ring of truth. Certainly the Warren Oates character is very, very carefully delineated as someone who, you know, clearly seems to be having a midlife crisis. Yeah. Has at the very at the very least, has got this at the at the at the time, brand spanking new beautiful muscle car, a Pontiac GTO. Uh, and he's very arrogant about this, you know.

He he's completely disdainful of these like little long-haired hippies and their shitty souped-up Chevy 55. Right. Um, and you know, even when he is eventually kind of vulnerable, we don't expect that he's telling the truth about whatever is making him vulnerable. But there's some version of something somewhere in him which uh clearly has experienced some sort of catalyst to take him on the road.

Whether that's a funeral, whether that's a, you know, just he doesn't actually know where he is going after all, but he's pretending that he he knows where he's going. I mean, there's there's so many ways you could kind of interpret it if you want to be literal, but I think like I I it makes me think of madmen a lot, especially the latter. Oh, that's a great seasons of madmen.

It's just this idea of like um a feeling of real alienation and and loneliness, and um, you know, I've achieved all of this stuff and I've clearly got money to burn. And where am I? Who am I? Right. You you just feel like he is escaping something. You don't know what it is, right? It could be something traumatic, it could be something mundane, you don't know, but that's what it feels like the entire movie that he's escaped something.

And I I I like the one thing that that uh there's not a lot of like really kind of impactful scenes or or dialogue in some movie because the dialogue is pretty sparse, but there is a moment when he tries to sort of open up to the driver, played by James Taylor, and tell him about his experience. And Taylor just cuts off and says, I don't want to hear about that. I don't care.

And I thought that was one of the most fascinating scenes in our movie because it's really like this moment where he's trying to like open up and Taylor's like, I don't want to talk about that. I'm just focused on the future. I'm not focused on the past. And it seems that Oates' character is just focused on the past and clearly working through something that happened, something awful that happened to him before. I want to much as I enjoy talking about Mr. Warren Oates, who we all revere.

Trevor Burrus, Jr. We should be clear, Mr. Warren Oates. Right. Yeah, I agree with that. I prefer to call him Sergeant Holka, but please go ahead. Trevor Burrus, Jr. I believe, I believe, sorry, this is taking things into a psycho. I believe we share a birthday. Meanwhile. Wow. That's a thing I'm very happy about. Me, Warren Oates, and Sylvester Stallone. Anyway, you win some, you lose some.

But I do want to probe a little bit at the let's charitably say minimalism of the other three principal characters. Because Christina, also on your sight and sound ballad, appropriately, is a Robert Bresson film. Inappropriately, it's not Mouchette, but that's so that's a fight for another day. Uh but it's a great movie, too. Hard to argue with the chef.

Aaron Ross Powell You know, Bresson liked to work with nonprofessional actors, and I don't know if Bresson withheld the screenplay, but I mean uh James Taylor still in the 2000s seems bitter about the fact that Hellman would only give him the screenplay like kind of one page at a time as they were traveling across the country. I mean, there is a relentless minimum. About these other three characters.

And I just wanted to wondered if you had any thoughts about unpacking what Hellman is going for with that. It's very interesting. I mean, certainly it's intentional. This isn't stunt casting. Although, of course, James Taylor was a huge musical star at the time. Of course, Dennis Wilson, the handsomest member of the Beach Boys, let's be honest. Yeah, the only one who really looked and embodied the California boy stereotype, right? 100%. But it wasn't stunt casting in any way.

And the same with Laurie Bird, who was, you know, a virtual unknown who was a model, was in a few other films, and sadly had a very tragic death at 25. But these three were non-professionals, and that seems to me to be on Hellman's part an intentional choice in order to give a certain feel to this mood piece, right? Which is um of people who they themselves probably don't know where they're going. I mean, you could call it vacancy if you're being uncharitable.

You could say they look vacant, you could say they're a wooded, but I think there's a degree of that, which I think br like Brisson is a really great reference point for. Brisson used to say that he wanted, I'm paraphrasing here, but he wanted the uh he didn't want the actors' performances or expressions to lean toward the audience. He wanted the audience to have to, because of their kind of blankness, to have to lean towards them.

It meant that you as a viewer had to project onto them your own impressions, thoughts, feelings, assumptions into that enigma. And depending on how you feel about your relationship to film and your own background and your biases and everything that uh any normal human being brings into watching a film, as kind of ambiguous as this, I think I think that's very much why this movie is both loved and also kind of people just are like, huh? About it.

But I do think that's very like I think Hellman was was working toward that with the that casting. And just as a as a to step back a second here, so so James Taylor apparently was cast in this film because uh I think it was Hellman or somebody else, saw his um billboard on the Sunsa strip in LA and thought he'd be good for the movie. Now, when this came out, he had just released, I believe, Sweet Baby James, which was his um uh big breakthrough record.

Um and I think if I remember correctly, he was even during this movie suffering f uh from heroin addiction. Uh I did not realize that he had a pretty awful heroin addiction problem for a long time. And it's not easy to pin down exactly what years that was happening. Yeah. Right. But his performance is I mean, I think Wooden is is is doing a lot of work in that description.

Although I my issue with this movie, to be honest, and I there was a lot about the movie that I found interest interesting and compelling. I had a hard time getting past the acting performances because this is a character study. This is not a plot-driven movie. In fact, if you ask me to tell you what the plot was, I yeah, it's a struggle to do that. I mean, they there's some races, they meet some people, you know, stuff happens, and then the movie burns out at the end, literally.

So you sort of do rely on kind of getting inside these characters and you learn such little about them. I mean, and and and I think as James Taylor, I I he's he's wooden. I still like him more than Dennis Wilson, who every lay every line reading just like it was like a like a like a hot poker in my chest to listen to him. He just could not deliver a line. I I it's he's not an actor.

This is this is hilarious to me because I had such an opposite reaction to Dennis Wilson in this movie, mainly just that I was like, I am in love with this myth. Okay, okay. See, now that's understandable. Because even I will say, like, you know, a long-committed record of heterosexuality, he is a good-looking man. He is very attractive.

Yeah. I mean, he's not doing much uh it kind of reminds me of like Ryan O'Neal and The Driver, which is another interesting movie, existential car movie, I guess. But he's got that kind of um not I'm not gonna insult Ryan O'Neal by saying that Dennis Wilson and Ryan O'Neal are on, you know, equal equal standpoint. Right, as far as actors, yeah.

Yeah. But I mean Wilson, you know, for him, he he to the to I guess anecdotally, the story was that Hellman was really struggling to find someone to play the mechanic and was literally just talking to like people in garages and like literal mechanics.

And then one of his, I think his casting director or someone on his production team suggested Wilson because Wilson was so uh inherently connected, I think both in the mind's eye of the audience, but also literally to like that Southern California motorhead culture, um, and had his own experience of that. So he brings that, and I think I think as much as anything, he's he's not an actor, he's a presence. Yes. You know, people often delineate between actors and movie stars.

Dennis Wilson is neither of those things, but if you were gonna put it on a spectrum, it's closer to star than actor, certainly. He's just bringing a presence, he's bringing a kind of um disaffected charisma and a certain sex appeal, I think. Um meanwhile, James Taylor looks, you know, he visibly looks tired. I I wasn't like I knew, of course, that in the 70s, at his most um sort of the height of his fame, that he was, you know, an addict.

I hadn't really thought about it in the context of this movie, but thinking about it now, like he's got these incredibly dark circles under his eyes, he looks physically quite like he's tired. And yet his music, like I think with any musician who acts, most of them, if their music is any good, you can't help but to read that musical performance on uh musical, you know, background onto the performance.

So with Taylor, that kind of sensitivity, even though he himself is uh monosyllabic, like not, you know, not a particularly likable character as such, there's a sensitivity or a vulnerability that you get from knowing that that's James Taylor. Aaron Powell It's so interesting you said this about his addiction because I didn't know this about him that he had that he had this terrible hair addiction. And next time I'm gonna have to tell you next about the Kennedy assassination, I think.

Apparently I I should I should read more, apparently. But um, Naturian Lady Killer as well, apparently. So okay. Here's okay, I'm gonna look a card's table. I can't stand Jane Sloane's music. I I really don't like him. I think he's like the least cool musician. Whenever he shows up at like some benefit, like he always does, I'm always like, ugh God, he's putting everyone to sleep. I'm not a fan. So I have to be asked.

I don't want to put us off track here, but have you seen a late performance of his with Carol King up on the roof? I No, because I just I can't stand it too. Okay. I'm open-minded and I will look it up. I find it very soothing. Okay. Okay, fair enough. But sorry. No, go ahead. No, I just let me just say this point about him, though.

So I just think if it was a very kind of boring, like not terribly sexy, exciting I just I was shocked when I discovered that the hair in action just seems so incongruous with what I know about James Taylor. Um, Christina and I are gonna take turns. You're gonna pick on uh uh Dennis Wilson and she's gonna hit you over the head. And then when you pick on James Taylor, I'll hit you over the head. Feel free. I look I get shifts all the time.

I I can't you know I have certain musicians I can't stand. He's one I hate Billy Joel. I there's certain musicians I hate just uh people don't like it. He's just yeah, it's there. Thank you, thank you. So my issue is that he does look like he's kind of stoned in this movie. Like you I actually can imagine that that he the way you look at him, he does have a look of somebody who's going through an addiction.

Uh that you could imagine when he goes offset when the when the camera's up rolling, that he fixes. Like you can actually, I actually could have imagined that about him. That that was that could have changed the way I sort of viewed his performance after I sort of realized this about him. I mean, this is one of those things. Don't fall over me. Bring it on, bring it on.

This is no, I was just gonna say, this is one of those things about 70s movies of this period which I, for better or worse, sort of love. I mean, not a good thing. Not pro-heroin addiction, to be clear. But um, in the same way that 10 years later, um a film like Miss 45 would come out and Abel Ferrara would burst into the scene and Ferrara would m would show active heroin addiction and show people actually shooting up like he does 10 years after that in Bad Lieutenant.

Um that griminess, that reality, there is something to that. Even though obviously we're talking with Tulane, uh it's a very allegorical story, and it's all kind of uh boiled down to the most minimal elements and archetypes. It has that, I don't know, there's there's like there's dirt under its fingernails, and I I like it for that. 100%. I want to make the case for something interesting happening in the relationship between these two characters.

And the movie makes very clear they're not lovers, but they are in in many ways sort of a couple, and their dominance is different in different settings. Like like James Taylor is clearly the the senior partner when it comes to anything having to do with the car, but Dennis Wilson obviously is the the chick magnet. You know, he gets he he gets the women first, at least. And and then James Taylor seems to have less success in that area.

And there's a f I think there's a fascinating tension between them that really comes to a boil when Taylor tells him that he's bet the tools against $300. And I think Dennis Wilson's character, this is toward the end, is is obviously upset about that, but doesn't articulate it, and it kind of that comes down from essentially the boss.

And so they're the symbiosis of their relationship, even if you say each performance is less than scintillating, I think the dynamic between the two characters is interesting, at least to me. I completely agree with that. And by the way, I just want to say also that there's a scene early in the movie where they go to they I mean, one thing that does happen in the film is they they race other cars and they they make money off of this, although the races are oddly only sort of partially shown.

They don't really there's not a lot of action in this movie as far as the racing. But he meets somebody, tries to challenges to him a race, and then basically insults his vehicle and insults the person. And like there's a sort of badassness like a uh uh um to to uh Taylor's character that kind of comes out at various moments. No, with Wilson. It only comes out in a car confrontation. For most of the movie, he's a lot of things. Except when he says that.

But when but in the other two instances, he becomes real alpha male type, and it's it's strange to see it from James Taylor. And in each instance that I'm remembering, it has to do with a confrontation between the cars. And it's there's there's this one line where the guy there trash talking about the cars, and the guy says, Oh yeah, want to like race for $50. And I think the line is something like, you know, make it make it three yards and you've got a race motherfucker, or something like that.

And that was a very controversial word at that time, and it was important that they retain it in the script, but it also was important because it was in such a contrast with the general disposition of James Taylor's character. And so I do think it was purposeful that there is this one outlet where he becomes extremely kind of masculinist in a way that we don't associate him in in the rest of the movie.

And to the extent Dennis Wilson is sort of masculine character, it's because he he sleeps with uh Laurie Bird, the hitchhiker that they pick up along along the way, which does create that odd scene where I guess Taylor had a thing for her because he goes back to the motel and he hears them having sex and he he sort of sits down with a sort of hang-dog look on his face outside the motel, and it's sort of um I don't know, it's like I guess this is maybe a cycle that's repeated itself often on this

on their their journeys of Dennis Wilson um having sex with random women who James Heather wants to sleep with also. Um which I guess is sort of No, go ahead. Yeah. I was just gonna say Who Among Us. I mean, Who Among Us, right? And I think Dennis Wilson was known as this. I mean, you know, the story, of course, how he he met the he met uh Charlie Manson because he had a threesome with, I think, a couple members of the Manson family, and that's how we met Charlie Manson. I forgot about yeah.

Um I mean there's there's two things. Sorry. No, go ahead. Go ahead. I was to say that there are two things about that. Uh Jonathan, you were saying about the relationship between these two characters, and you see this so much in 70s American films, particularly ones which are about kind of journeys, adventures, and road movies. I mean, Butch Cassidy's the most obvious one, right?

But the buddy movie, or this kind of homosocial, even sometimes homoerotic relationship between men is completely foregrounded.

And Molly Haskell famously wrote about this in From Reference to Rape when she writes about how women had been kind of marginalized and pushed to the side in their roles in American film, in spite of a sexual revolution and women's lib, um, almost as a way to reassert masculinity, almost as a way to kind of say, actually, the really important relationships are between men because we understand each other on some level, even if we have issues like that. There is this kind of pecking order, right?

So you see it in Bush Cassidy, you see it in another great 70s, strange 70s road movie, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, with Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges, where Jeff Bridges is this much younger, dare I say, slightly twinky young man who is always chasing skirts, but clearly is in such mad uh admiration and love for the very macho Clint character that these two outlaws have this very unique and homoerotic relationship. Um, really goes all the way, Thunderbolt and Lightning. It really does.

Yeah, it really does in a way that's fascinating. Yeah. Um yeah, I think you're feeding back into that with this, but then you bring Lori Bird into it, and then that that becomes a whole other conversation. Yeah, I mean, her character is, I think, kind of fascinating, and her arc is actually kind of somewhat interesting, maybe the most interesting of all of the characters in the movie, because there is an arc, right?

She she shets into their car, begins driving with them, has this great line about where she has to talk to them and they're being very sort of taciturn, and she says, You're not the zodiac killers, are you? Uh she's one of the best lines in the movie. And uh she eventually uh sleeps with as Wilson. Does she I she hooks up with James Taylor? I'm not sure if they actually are together, but there's some sort of they make out at some point.

But by the end of the film, she I again, this is sort of a you know metaphor alert, but she ends up just abandoning them, right? So like she's with them for the entire time or most of the movie, and then at the end of the movie, she gets on a motorcycle with somebody, drops herself off and leaves. And they're off to do their their road adventure. And at various points, you know, uh Warren Otis's character tries to get her to come with him to Florida, right?

And you know, I think she makes that with him too, now that I think about it. So her arc is sort of fascinating in this movie. And I'm I'm like, what do you sort of make of her? It as ever with a lot of these things, it's it's complicated in that.

Um when you look at the role of women in these 70s road movies, they are largely everything you assume, decorative, sexual objects, uh there to interrupt the flow of narrative to the to interrupt the pure adrenaline and seriousness of masculine speed and danger and you know, basically just come and fuck shit up. Um and, you know, there's a there's a sometimes can be a real disdain and borderline violence towards them.

So I I wrote in my criterion piece I wrote in my criterion piece about um dirty marry crazy Larry. Um, and there's a horrible line that I think Peter Fonda says to Susan George, where she annoys him and he's like, I'm gonna break every bone in your crotch. Like this is so that's to me, that's the watermark of like women in road movies a lot of the time. So Lori Byrd on that spectrum is a lot more uh interesting and a lot less, you know, obviously kind of a misogynist creation.

Having said that, of course, she's the girl and the whole thing revolves around this kind of dynamic, sexual dynamic or will they, won't they, of the situation. Um so you know, you gotta kind of land somewhere in the middle in terms of the progressiveness of it all. But I think it's inarguable that Lori Byrd gives if you're talking about three non-professional actors, if you're really gonna like rake them over the coals, I think she probably gives the best performance of the three of them.

So low bar, but I I think you're right. I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. And she, yeah, she she was was something I didn't realize for a long time, actually, uh, is in that famous scene in uh Annie Hall where she plays Paul Simon's girlfriend. In real life, she was Art Garfuckel's girlfriend, what she's like, she's about seven feet tall, it looks like, and she's you know, sort of towering over him. But I did not realize that was her for such a long time.

I I didn't realize either as I looked it up and I was sort of shocked that that is Lori Byrd. And just as a background, I mean she her her her story, her her arc in real life is very tragic, unfortunately. She after apparently she was um dating uh uh dating maybe about the right word, Monty Hellman on the set of this movie. Uh and she was, I believe, 17 at the time, and he was I think about twenty years older.

Um after moved over, she started dating Art Garfunkel, and she eventually committed suicide uh in his own. No, but the most interesting part of that story is that Monty Hellman and Art Garfunkel look a lot alike. And it's not a common look. So, you know, she she knew what she looked. She was like, she was like, I need that, I need the cut rate version of Monty Hellman. I guess she had a guy had a thing for guys with Jewish Afro, so good for the thing. Yeah, it's really, really sad.

And it does, it does uh I think like anything like that, if you're aware of it while you're watching the film, and she's so young and radiant and kind of cultish. And um you think about particularly the end of the film when she kind of vanishes, you yeah, it there's a real poignance to it, knowing that she would, you know, die at twenty-five. I was a little frustrated with her character, though.

She her character did provide one of my favorite moments uh in the movie uh when she's she's wandering through Santa Fe and interacting with people. And that was obviously stolen footage, and I think they got permissions after the fact or something. And I really that's what made me think of the Rain people. They did that a lot in Copless, the Rain people, and I really enjoyed that sequence, and I thought she did a great job in what must have been ad-libbed interactions with those people.

But the character itself, and I would also add, speaking of, you know, women in 70s films, she I do not think the movie exploits her. The character the characters may exploit her, but I don't think the movie exploits her, and I appreciated that. But I I had trouble getting a hold of the character. I I I found her a little eva even too free-spirited for me.

And I'm I'm pro-free spirit, but in terms of what her motivations were and her comings and goings, I I actually couldn't couldn't grasp them in my hand. A proto-manic pixie dream girl. I mean, actually, I would have I would never have used those words, but that's a great description. I mean, she's kind of a foil for these other these characters, right?

I mean, uh it's interesting what you're talking about about the presentation of female characters having just watched a Casta Vedi's film, Mikey and Nicky, and just the horrific misogyny of that film. Uh although it's a it's a great film, just that there's a lot of obvious misogyny in it. This isn't as a misogynistic portrayal. I mean, she is, in a sense, treated as though she is um almost a um an addendum to these characters, but she does have an arc. She does have some free will.

I mean, she does actually decide on her own. She seems to make decisions on her own, at least to abandon them by the end of the day. No, no. I I think she shows tremendous autonomy, and I really appreciated that. She weaves her way in and out of different characters and situations at her pleasure and discretion. What I was frustrated by was my inability to really figure out what her underlying pleasure and motivational discretion was. Yeah, I I agree with that because I also don't think I know.

But what I what I do like about it, and this is one of those things that I've come across I I'd be hard put to think of a specific example, but like quite a lot in these movies, um, whether they're directed by men or women, whether they're kind of considered to be these early feminist classics or, you know, definitively not, is sometimes that the portrayal of a of a female character, her sexuality, her freewheeling nature, whatever, it feels like a negative cliche.

And in the time that it's made, sometimes that's the case. That it's almost come completely full circle to the point that watching it from a standpoint of 2026, you're like, yeah, no, she's with like she's just exercising her sexual agency. That's cool as hell. She doesn't, she's not going to explain herself to anyone. And you know that's not the intention, really, of the director or how it's being visualized. But you know, this is another case of projecting something, I guess, onto a character.

I guess actually thinking specifically, looking for Mr. Goodbar is another good example of something like that, where if you don't know what's to come with that absolutely horrific moralistic ending, deeply misogynistic ending, um, you spend most of the film being like Diane Keaton seems bohemian and cool, like she's hanging out on a mattress on the floor in New York, sleeping with young Richard Gere, drinking little red wines. Like she looks like she's having a great time.

You know, of course, that's not how it turns out for her. But we did looking for Mr. Goodgar a couple of months ago after Diane Key. Oh, did you? And yeah, and we found that tough. I I think I probably it's a tough movie. Uh I thought it's a fascinating movie. I think it's, by the way, one of her best performances. I think she's just fantastic. Fantastic performance. It's it's a very strange and frustrating, slippery object, that movie. Trevor Burrus, Jr. It is.

I think I had a more charitable take, at least on the not charitable, but I could at least find an interpretation that wasn't incredibly misogynistic. Jonathan, I think, disagree with me about that. But uh I mean choose your lane. It's either misogynistic or outrageously homophobic. You know, that you know, that's the end of the thing. Oh, well, it was definitely. That's quite clear.

But you know, actually, now that you mentioned this, this is a good segue because we should talk about one of the sort of interesting uh I guess subplots of the movie. That's again giving too much credit to the plot, but let's just say subplots, which is the moment when Duarno, Mr. Warner, excuse me, GTO driver, picks up Harry Dean Stanton. Uh and Harry Dean Stanton, I mean, I I think I'm being accurate here, kind of tries to sexually assault him in the car.

Sexually assault is a very strong word. Well, I mean, you know, okay. Like they just say copper feel, right? Yeah, he rubbed his thigh. He rubbed his thigh. Yeah. I mean, look up it this way, Jonathan. If if um if a woman was driving and a man did that, you'd say, well, that's not sexual, but you would say that was really inappropriate. So I uh it's a little bit inappropriate what he does. It is Harry Potter. It's totally inappropriate. That's true.

Harry Dean Stan can get away with a lot, in my opinion, right? He's a little bit uh maybe too fresh, if you will, in this scene. This I was just gonna say it's interesting if you hold it up to Vanishing Point, right? Which is I I believe the same year, right? 71. 71, yeah. Um and you have a a a wildly unnecessary and very homophobic interlude with gay hitchhikers in the car.

And yeah, this isn't quite that, especially because Harry Dean Stanton kind of mitigates that by being his completely singular kind of eccentric self. Um but again, like it it says something about the way that these movies can both articulate these kind of masculine American anxieties and also subvert them, right? Like both things are happening at once a lot of the time. Well did you think so?

One thing that I kept kept thinking about that scene a lot was was that the way that uh uh GTO responds to it is he says, I don't do that or I don't play that, but he doesn't throw them out of the car, so I'll drop you off at the next stop. He he handles it maybe a little bit more um uh better than I think one might expect 1971, having someone come on to you, which made me sort of wonder is Warren Oates going through a situation where he is maybe questioning his own sexuality.

There's something about the way he responds to it that was sort of surprising for the time. And I don't think that would be a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. I think um I mean if the film is kind of about never being able to outrun yourself, and I mean I think it's a b i it's a big pitch to try and say that you really know entirely what the film is about because I mean I don't know. Yeah, exactly.

It's like seeing uh I mean, in my view at least, it's like seeing like a Picasso and being like, I know exactly what this is about, but I'm gonna explain it to you. I just you know, it feels feels presumptuous. But uh, you know, if it's about the fact that you can never outrun the inevitability of being uh outflanked, vested, aging. Um then that kind of makes sense, right? That Oates is running is running from something. He's running from something.

But it's And I mean also he he has an arc in a way that the Lori Bird character also has that the the main two, that the mechanic and the driver have and it you know don't have in the same way. Um they're kind of set on this course, right? They're set like even though we don't know they don't know, we don't know exactly where that's going. We know they're off on this race and then they're locked into the race with the GTO. Um, and we know how set they are on that.

But Oates' character, it's almost as though like it's sort of hard to articulate, but the the James Taylor and Dennis Wilson characters are kind of almost resigned to the meaninglessness of the pursuit, or or resigned to maybe not the meaninglessness, but resigned to the the kind of that grind in a sense, that the constantly, perpetually moving forward towards the next thing, right. Um, and satisfaction is scarce.

But Oates' character is yearning for something or trying to prove himself in a way which there's something quite tragic about it. There's a kind of tragic vulnerability in there. Aaron Ross Powell There's something I find his character incredibly tragic. And in fact, what's interesting is they have this race in which he is very stressed about losing this race because it could involve him losing his vehicle.

And even though, you know, uh the driving mechanic have the advantage because they can take turns driving, they give him all kinds of breaks. In fact, they drive his car at one point, right? They're they're not that. There's a sympathy that starts to happen. Yeah, and and it's weird because like their whole, you know, their whole shtick is they basically race people for money. And they have a chance to take this guy's car. It's a lot of money, right? It's a nice car.

And they don't seem to really care about it. Like it's it's a they they and the movie lose interest in that race. Uh eventually uh just abandoned. Yeah, which is the same thing. It's like the cannonball run, but like they just stop, basically, you know. Yeah, it's such a courageous choice, and like does it make sense in like a direct psychological character motivation way? Hmm. Dunno. People change their minds, I guess.

But like it it does say something in like a broader sense about all of these rifts in American society at this time, which are enormous. Not just the kind of silent majority hippie thing, but also age, consumerism, class, um they all kind of are floating around the periphery of this relationship between these two cars and the people in them.

And I think that kind of ability to have that openness or kind of almost, you know, a gesture of kindness, there's a sort of nobility and an honor in it, um, which is really weirdly moving. But there's something also too where like the journey for these characters is way more important than the destination. By the way, whenever he's a line with my with my with my daughter, she gets so annoyed with me, she's like, it's a trite. But i in this movie it actually works.

The journey is really what this is all about. Um but to your point, you just I disagree. Oh, go ahead. Oh, interesting. Oh, so I'm not sure. But I but I want to hold I I I don't know if we want to it would be at the end. Can we go to the end and then come back? Yeah, yeah, please. Like I said, there's no podcast, please gonna come in and tell us what to do. So we can do whatever we want here. Uh, that's a relief.

Um but as I've said, I've had my own struggles with this movie, but I do do not think it's about the journey. I think it's about what James Taylor feels at the very end of the movie when you when you lose the sound and he's about to race and and he's focused. And I think his entire life is revolving around getting to that moment.

And I think that it's flagged for us uh with a line that Oates' character says earlier when he kind of narrates his life to somebody, but it's not his life, it's actually the life of the driver and the mechanic. And then he uses this line. He says, those satisfactions are permanent. And if this movie is about anything, and I'm not sure that it is, but if it is, I think it is about chasing that satisfaction.

And I think we're given that when Taylor is sitting in the car and suddenly everything is silent because he's approaching that moment when he's going to have what, 10 seconds? 10 seconds of utter kind of Zen-like inner peace and perfection. And so I don't think it's I don't think the story about the tr the trip is more important than destination. I think it's a story about searching for those special moments. Yeah, those highs. Isn't that the journey? That's the that's actually my point.

I mean, actually, I'm agreeing with you. I think that's the the journey is finding those highs along the way. Where where they get to is much less important to them. Well, I think ultimately, like, I don't know, maybe this is psychopathable, but uh going back to the whole you you can you can never go fast enough. It's never like the thing is over too quickly, right? The pleasure seeking, the adrenaline, the that moment of glory when you're when you're poised on the cusp of it.

And it's the thing that um a lot of Formula One drivers say that there is a moment where it's almost like it becomes like they're one with the car and they can't hear anything and they're just gliding along. And Lewis Hamilton says that.

And like I there's there's this element of kind of um it's not hedonism in the most traditional sense, but there is this kind of sense of like uh there's this dissatisfaction and emptiness at the heart of society, uh of these people, and no matter where they stand in society, and like is sort of looking for this expression of something that's real and true and in fact very dangerous.

Yeah. I mean it I mean look, I guess the question I have is is that you you see he have that experience at the end of the movie. Do we know that he doesn't have that experience any other times that he's racing? I mean, I guess. I assume he has that experience every time that he has the assumption too. We're only shown it at the end, and that's why we know we're at the end of the movie. And I think it really does.

You know, we can't ask Monty this question, but I do I do think it links up with that Oates line. I mean, I I it is my favorite line in this movie. Those those satisfactions are permanent. Uh look, I agree. I I think it's the most interesting line in the movie, and I think it speaks a lot to what the movie is about. But I think it's it speaks to something of searching for those moments of satisfaction.

Uh that's kind of how I interpreted the driver and the mechanic, that that's what they're basically doing. They're searching for these brief moments of ecstasy, of course. Although the mechanic doesn't get the ecstasy, does he? He's sat in the kitchen. He just has to wait. He does not get that moment. It's true. That's why he gets all the witnesses. Right, right.

You know, but but Hellman was very kind of clear in a lot of interviews retrospectively about this idea that he didn't like the neatness of Hollywood films, the traditional neatness, everything tied up in a boat. You don't say. You don't say. And that he, you know, he wanted to end his movies before the resolution. And this is that par excellence. But like it's also you said earlier about what makes it a quintessential new Hollywood great 70s American movie, is that ambiguity, right?

Is the fact that we're still kind of tussling with what it might be about or what it might represent, um or being frustrated by it, if that's the case. But like, yeah. So can I ask you, I'm c this is for both of you, but I'm curious. The final shot of the movie is basically the film flaming out, uh, for lack of a better term, or or or or you know, it's like what happens in a actual film bursting into flames in in the camera.

Aaron Ross Powell I read somewhere that Projections apparently hated this movie because they made them feel like they were it was like set them into a panic. Exactly, exactly. I mean how do you interpret that? It's a very surprising and sort of strange ending, which does end kind of very abruptly. And again, doesn't show the race. This is a this is a recurrent theme in the movie, and we should talk about that maybe that must mean something.

We see all these races, like we see parts of the race, we don't actually see the full race. And in this case, this big setup, we don't see the race, we just see the film explode and the movie end. So what does all that mean? You know, it's this is interesting, yeah, it's uh anti-action and it's um sort of less is more. I think Kelman was a very minimalist director. He had like a he had a certain classicism in his visual style.

He wasn't, you know, he wasn't like Antonioni, who I I do think of when I watch this movie a little bit, because it does have a certain kind of keeps you at an arm's length and it moves at a certain pace, and people tend to either really jibe with it or not. Um but I I mean, if you really want to shoot for the stars, you could say it's a commentary on film. You could say, you know, you could you could really kind of go down the rabbit hole with what you think it's about.

But to me it's it's you know something about a generation that's that's kind of um restless, dissatisfied, and maybe bent on self-destruction. I personally did not like it, uh the that that choice. Uh and I thought it was kind of I mean, it's obviously lifted from a shot of Bergman's in persona, and that also made me a little nervous, and Monty will never explain it, which is his want. Uh when he was on the road with uh what was it, the Ro Road to Nowhere was his last film.

I took my son to see it, uh he was pretty little then, at the Harvard Film Archive and Monty did a Q ⁇ A, and solely to embarrass my son, I asked a question uh about a certain choice that he made, and of course he's you know refused to explain himself. And so there's something, you know, willfully enigmatic about the the film bursting into flames. I do think he wanted a non-explanatory ending, and he that was the end of the movie, and he needed to get out.

I believe as written it just faded to black, which would have been maybe a less dramatic way of saying the same thing. But I do for me, it was a little bit of a of a too obvious lift from my from my homie Icky B. Wow. Uh yeah. I thought Iggy B, I like that. You know, uh, okay. I heard this great line. I was listening to somebody talk about this film and said the movie feels like that the the director just put all the outtakes into the movie and left out all the action.

And that is a lot of what's how the snap. I know, but it sounds kind of savage when you say it like that. I think there's something to that. Like this movie is about the stuff that happens between the action sequences. I mean, it's very purposeful, it's quite obviously purposeful that he doesn't show these uh uh uh races, right? There's an intentional traditional Yeah, this traditional narrative kind of satisfaction that you would get, right? Trevor Burrus Right.

Like there's a it's clearly intentional on his part to do that. And I feel as though there there's an element here of saying it's almost like an anti-film. It's a way of saying, like, these are the things that happen you don't see on f on camera, but that's what I'm most interested in looking at and talking about. And you know, from that perspective, it kind of makes sense that he would, you know, burn the film at the end of the movie.

I mean, it there is some there is a consistent line there that would lead yourself to that ending. Um it's sort of Godardian, isn't it?

That kind of very playful, self-ref referential, sometimes obnoxious, like you know, I think there's as much DNA or you know, depending on how you feel about the movie, aspirationally, DNA um shared with Goddard and shared with something like Jules and Jim as well, which, you know, that the dynamic between the three characters and this triangle that they're in, um, as it has with BBS productions films like Five Easy Pieces, which, you know, it does it still like visually shares all that

beautiful widescreen and all the kind of detritus of small town America. So it's this wonderful marriage, right, of these two things. Um I want to pick up on your question. I'm not sure where I was going with that. Well, I can go somewhere with it for you. Please take the take the baton and go. I do because I again, as someone who sits on the fence with regard to this movie, I that that, you know, show the outtakes version or uh uh of this got my back up a little bit because of the widescreen.

If you think of the parts of this movie that are not on the road, you've got two types of scenes. You've got gas station scenes and you've got cafe and diner scenes. And the widescreen compositions in both of those settings, I think, are marvelous. They're beautiful. They're impeccably crafted, with both the framing and the colors and even the the the little barriers and things and the windows. This is this is high-level craftsmanship.

And I think what's interesting is that it's a road movie, but where the real craftsmanship of the constructions comes forward for me is in these two settings where they're not moving, uh like like the cafes and the gas stations. So I do I don't think it's uh slepshot or slap what's the English language word for this? Slip shot. Yeah, that must be it. Uh as as would be suggested by just kind of randomly tossing in this footage or that footage.

Um one of my favorite things of this movie are those constructions in those, those visual constructions in those settings. Aaron Ross Powell I mean, Hellman was for you know someone who was interested in visiting real authentic American small towns and filming on location and getting this authentic cross-country feel to things. Also someone who I think was extremely particular in terms of how the film was set out visually, how his compositions looked, what was in within the frame.

Um and even though the story is kind of fractured and modernist, there is a kind of um almost like I say, a classicism to some of the shots and the way the way the movie looks. And I love it. You can imagine Vim vendors without without this. I love the production design of the movie. I love the the garages and the restaurants and you know, when she's playing at the pinball machine, all these little elements that just that that make that feel very organic in the movie. And I sort of love that.

But I want to pick up on something you said or something that was. Before you do, before you do, Christina. So this is great because all the way back to the beginning of our conversation, you mentioned vendors, and then we think of a movie like Alice and the Cities. So Alice and the Cities, I have a deep personal, emotional relationship with. That movie touches me in at my core in a way that that this movie doesn't. And so that's the that's the thing that's missing in in this movie for me.

But may I mean maybe Alice is setting the bar just a little too high for anybody, but but still, this is on your sight and sound list. So that's uh I'm sorry, Michael. I wanted to get that in there because anytime Alice in the Cities comes into my mind, I must discuss it. It's one of my favorite movies.

I do think it's interesting thinking about that though, in terms of a sight and sound ballot, and I mean, obviously trying to choose ten films of mystery is a nightmare, and I'd probably do it differently if I had it now, and et cetera, et cetera. Yes. But I think with that one, I mean Nashville might have been a choice from 70s Hollywood. There's so many others that it could have been.

Um I guess it is very interesting to think about all-time favorites when you kind of uh put them into a canon like that where it feels very, very like you've written it and it's been written written like the Ten Commandments in stone, right? Because looking at it now, I think a lot of them, I'm like, that makes sense, that makes sense. Tulane is interesting because I think I'm I'm quite a um open, earnest, dare I say, sometimes sentimental person. And this is not that movie.

You know, that that this movie as Brisson says, it pulls away from you and you lean towards it. But there is something ultimately, I think, kind of moving about that too. I don't know. It's in it's interesting you bring this up because I, you know, Jonathan makes this point about having an emotional connection to a film, and that can mean lots of different things. We talked about, you know, sex lives and videotape last week.

I have emotion I have an emotional connection to that film because I happen to go on a first date with somebody who I dated. That just that movie like just create like it has this can hold over me because of that. It's not the same thing we're talking about here, but like these things can work in different ways. Just movies have a certain resonance for you for different reasons. Duck soup is one because my kids love the movie. We watched it 20 times when they were younger.

Yeah. And I just it just has that feel for me. But then movies that that touch you on some deeper emotional level. This movie, I I don't know how it touches you. I guess I'm really sort of fascinating. It's not well, this is the thing. I think I for me it just it it kind of enters into in a cerebral and aesthetic way, maybe more than an emotional way. Like there are things about it that I find really touching.

Um, and I think Warnotes is definitely the kind of heart and soul of that in many ways. Uh, like those his moments, his lines. But I think my long, long time fascination with all of the things this movie kind of represents and explores culturally, politically, socially, um, and that it's done so fucking stylishly, and everyone in it looks cool as hell.

And I guess maybe I'm a little superficial, but you know, in the same way that I absolutely love American Gigolo, it was so close to making my sight and sound top ten. Wow. Also a deep also a deeply homophobic movie as an apple. So it's interesting, you just said I just I just think about like two 2001 is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I don't feel an emotional connection to the film. I just think it's a really I I appreciate it on a cerebral level.

I you know, I just I and that's true for a lot of Kubrick's films, right? I love Barry Linden too. I think that's a beautiful film. I don't feel that same kind of like it doesn't touch me in some way. It's just this movie that just resonates with me because I think it just the themes are really fascinating. I think that it's just beautifully shot and and I'm just uh awed by the by sort of craft of it. But I I you know movies hit you in different ways.

This is one thing we talk about a lot in this podcast. Movies can hit you in different ways and they can resonate with you in ways that maybe they do for you, they don't for somebody else. I think that's true for this movie for me, and I think for you, Christine. I think we just have a different different reaction to it. Well John, it's also like I do wonder. Sorry. Good. There's just my first and only commandment, which as you know, Michael, is the movie you like is the movie you like.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, I again like, um on one hand I'm saying this about the cerebral and aesthetic and so sociocultural stuff that fascinates me about it. And these great musical stars of the seventies, and I'm a real sucker for seventies, you know, I music, that's where I I'm I'm happy there.

Uh but I guess on the other hand it it kind of It begs the question of I don't know, what c what kind of film viewer are you and what not only do you respond to, but like what is the kind of central enigma that keeps you What keeps you up at night, right? What's the existential question? What you know, what's what's percolating around in there when you're alone for any period of time?

And I do think there are certain movies that tap into that in a way that feels kind of abstract or feels kind of almost even subconscious that you respond to. I mean, uh yeah, one thing I'll just say about this doing this podcast now, you know, I'm not a film expert the way that you guys are, but one thing that I've definitely come learned from doing this, having this experience is that you sort of do understand after a while that there's no right or wrong answer to any of this. Right.

And and I and I think I always thought, no, no, that's a great movie. And if you don't think so, you're you're just stupid. And if you love it, you can't do that. I occasionally I reserve the right to think that about a few movies, but I try not to do it as a rule. I do as well, actually. Singing in the rain. If you don't like that, there's something wrong with you. I I actually will give you that one. I agree. And and on the flip side, if you like Forrest Gump, something's wrong with you.

That's actually something I just fucking or anything by Lars Vantruer. That's just that's just me. That's just my particular point of view. I can't stand it as a big thing. That's funny. I also have a bugbear, a bug excuse me, bugbear about Lars Vantrier, but that's a that's a podcast for another day. I I despise his movies. Despite it. But that's again, that's just me.

And I I and I I and I, again, I that maybe the only single person out movie uh filmmaker I'll say that if you like his films, there's something wrong. But generally speaking, I've come to understand that like everyone just reacts to movies differently. Everyone's a different sort of emotional connection to it. And I it's funny because before you came on, we were talking about this, Don, and I were talking about how I I feel like I'm missing something because I'm not getting this movie.

People I respect, reviewers I respect, just love this movie. And I'm like, what am I missing here? Well, let me take one more swing at this. Please. Although again, as you know, my first commandment, the movie you like is the movie you like, and never let anybody tell you otherwise. But I I did want to get Christina's reaction to what for me, aside from the compositions that I love and the Santa Fe sequence, which I revere, there's about a two-thirds of the way in, there's a sequence.

In Arkansas, they go into the cafe and it's very edgy there. It's con it's a subtle confrontational thing, and that's where some of this kind of suggestive hippie stuff comes out and and Warren Oates actually uh protects uh the guys from what could have been an ugly situation. And then where do you go from there? That's the first real turn of the 70s danger moment there. And from there, you have two death scenes.

You have the car crash, which isn't necessary for the plot, but you you're you're right there, you have death in the face. And then Warren Oates picks up the woman and the child going to the cemetery. So this is a that sequence, I think, is at the the core of something this movie is trying to say. To me, I never unpacked what it was trying to articulate with that sequence. But it's about 68 minutes in and it goes to about minute 90, and then it takes you to the end of the movie.

It's a it is a dark and unexpected turn for me. And I thought the strongest third of the film entirely, except for those two other things I already lauded that I love so much, but as as a a movie movie, as it was going along, that segment of the movie I thought became something somewhat different. It's I mean, it's deeply enigmatic. I wouldn't claim to have any, you know, particular huge insight into it.

But I I mean, y you do think 1971 it's the hard hat riots in New York, this kind of huge um backlash against hippie dum, um the Kent State shooting, like there there are all these flashpoints that have ended up leading to actual violence and death i in a domestic setting, not abroad, not anywhere else, right there on American soil. Um and it's sort of a reversal of the Easy Rider situation, right? Yeah. Where you know there's that kind of moment with all the rednecks in the diner.

Um so there's something kind of moving about that, I think. There's something kind of um thoughtful about about seeing these people meet on some sort of common, decent ground. Um It also reminds me a little bit of um Medium Cool, the Wexler film at various points, because although it's not explicitly political in that way or really like quasi-documentary, it seems to be touching on a certain tumultuousness and a certain kind of rumbling within young people in America.

And um there seems to be a genuine genuine stakes, or is genuine danger. You know, um I'm gonna totally just off the top of my head, I wonder if that moment is supposed to Because it you're right, Jonathan, it is the it's where there's some friction brought into the movie, right? Where this guy kind of says you guys talks about them being hippies and you're you boys live around here, you know. Right, exactly. It's very menacing. Very menacing.

And I actually was expecting it to to go south and it doesn't. But maybe it goes south with the two death scenes after. Maybe the idea of is that it's sort of the reality of these divisions in society or the or the reality of just life in America in 71 kind of interfering into this idyllic kind of road movie experience that these these pe these characters are having. I mean, I'm just I'm just you know, making stuff that go along.

But I was struck by the fact this is the reason I mean in 71, these two characters are both relatively young. There's no discussion of Vietnam. There's no talk about it and I mean and that look not every movie has to be about Vietnam because it's made in 71. I recognize that. But it just there was something about that look, you have this obvious generational gap between GTO and the driver and the mechanic.

And you think I I can remember thinking like, aren't these guys should they maybe be drafted or why what's going on with them? Like, why are they out on the road able to do this? And I don't know. I mean, i there's something else so surprising about that in the movie that maybe maybe that scene is supposed to kind of convey this idea that that like this is their idyllic life and this is reality kind of interfering in that. I don't know. Just putting it out.

I think it's in I think it's in the malaise, you know. Vietnam is the the unspoken cloud, like in so many movies that don't explicitly mention it. It's just the the sense of like the death drive, the sense of self-destruction, the sense of you know directionlessness. It's where are we going and why are we going there? And why is it so scary, you know?

Yeah. I mean, I can I think that is one it's interesting you brought that scene up because I haven't thought about it yet before, but you're right. It is like the the most moment of friction between in this movie. Not the only moment, but it's a pretty prominent moment of friction. And it does suggest sort of what that that generational issue that we're not just generational, it's cultural too. I mean, it's these guys are not from around there, right? They're not.

But even in the scene in between the death scene, it says cafe, death scene, death scene. There's a small scene in between when they're driving before they come upon the first death scene. And there's a real tension between our characters at that point.

Uh the car is trying to pass them, and uh Dennis says, Let him pass, and James Taylor says something like, Not today, as if there's something about the encounter at the cafe that has hardened him in a certain way, and he begins to drive somewhat recklessly, and then you get onto this death. I mean, death comes into the movie, you don't think about death at a and in this movie up to minute sixty-eight, at least I wasn't.

And then suddenly it's really there in your face and the the tension between the characters. It's for me the movie took a a a strong turn in in that third, as as as I've already said, but it's really interesting.

And maybe there is I I don't want to oversell this because I don't think Bonte was thinking about Vietnam or making a film about Vietnam, but to go back to a point Christina made earlier in the discussion, but everybody who walked into that theater who was in the target audience of this movie was certainly thinking about Vietnam that day. So it's not a good thing. No one needs to be reminded. Yeah. Right. And I can't believe you say he wasn't thinking about Vietnam. I I call bullshit on that.

I'm I mean it's everyone what right? It's in it's in the the the ether. You can't not be thinking about it a little bit. I don't know. First of all, you said about not being the death movie. I I r I remember thinking something bad is gonna happen to Warren as his character. Like there's something doomed about his character. I kept thinking like he's gonna he's gonna die into this film.

He doesn't, of course, but there is something about his character that just feels like he's living a little bit on borrowed time. Yeah. There's something so tragic about his character and his his experience. Yeah, it it really is. And and just we'll say this. I mean, we can sort of finish up here a little bit, but I think Warren Oates is he's great in everything, but he's really great in this movie. I mean, without him in this movie, this movie would be unwatchable.

He just he he brings such humanity to I agree, I agree that he's the high point, certainly performance of the whole rule, everything about it. Unwatchable is unfair. It's a very nice movie, it's very pretty. Yeah. I uh no, but he is fantastic.

And you know, so much about that, the way he kind of um changes his story and performs this kind of masculine like thing, whether he's whether it's bravado, whether it's a moment of kind of you know trying to level with somebody and be like, this happened to me, and my old lady did the, you know, whatever, like it all feels like a little bit of a performance.

And that's it's great that he's a pathological liar because that just adds something to this idea, which long before anyone was really talking about it, as far as I'm very aware, in 1971, Hellman and you know, uh this cohort are looking at this idea that men are really bad at figuring out how to make friends and to communicate with people uh and often have to use the prism of something external like sports or cars in this case to do that. Yeah. Yeah, that I think that's right.

I think that's there's a lot to that there. I mean, and there's a lot of, you know, elements to uh to to you, I mean, OS character sort of runs the gamut of masculinity, right? He confronts them uh uh when they he they turns them into the cops at one point, and then he sort of softens up and gives them a drink out of his traveling bar that he has set up in his trunk, which I mean I'll just figure out how to get that in my car. Uh all right.

Well, I think we could probably talk about this movie for all night. There's so much, there's a lot you know what I gotta say something. I'm gonna go out back after we finish talking about this. I'm gonna watch the movie again. Because you guys have given me so much to think about about this film that uh there's a richness to this movie that you can really sink your teeth into. This is a lot of analysis on this and so. That's flattering. That's nice. Oh, yeah, no, absolutely.

And for those of you who haven't seen it before, I mean, I we recommended you watch it last week. If you can't find it, yeah, um it's very hard to find uh uh streaming anywhere. You can find it on Internet Archive. It is available, I think. Uh you can find the criteria, criteria. Which is why commandment number two protects physical media. Protect physical media. Yeah, and somebody needs to re-release this on 4K stat. I don't know what the right licensing situation is, because I I don't know.

But it would look incredible on 4K. It's right there, guys. Come on, someone do it. And if somebody is listening, also if you could maybe have it like run at a theater in New York so I can watch on the big screen, I would really appreciate it. That would be nice. This is a movie I'd love to see on the big screen. It's not Me too. I've never seen it big. Yeah, I think it would be it would be great. Um, yeah. We should we should somebody's listening if you can arrange that, please.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you in advance. Thank you in advance. Uh well, thank you now to Christina Newland. You you this was just a great conversation. I'm so glad that that we had a chance to talk with you about this. Thank you. Me too. I know there was a couple of near misses ahead ahead of this, but I'm really happy it happens. You know, uh it it it it came together and it was just a wonderful conversation. I hope everyone enjoyed it.

If you're enjoying the podcast, as always, please don't forget to subscribe, uh, leave a review, buy us a cup of coffee, tell your friends about how much you love that 70s movie podcast. And of course, as always, send us your recommendations. And just to give you a heads up, next week we will be talking about a Cassavetti's movie. I think it's gonna be Mikey and Nikki, but let's just you know let's let's remember about Elaine May. Right. Mikey and Nicki. It's an Elaine May movie.

It's a lane movie. Oh I'm sorry. I said, you keep doing that. You're I keep doing You're right, I did. Jesus Christ. And I just watched Heartbreak Kid, too. I shouldn't I shouldn't be doing this. Oh my god, Heartbreak Kid. What a movie. What a movie. Oh my gosh. I want to talk about Heartbreak Kid, and and Jonathan was like, you know, he um I don't have an hour. I don't I mean I I like the movie, but I can't believe you don't have an hour on that movie. I can't believe you don't. Oh, I I do.

I do. Yeah. There is so much. My problem with Elaine Mays movies is that she's so like the most nakedly, laceratingly cynical director, female director on the subject of the relationships between men and women and how men are cowardly and false and women are manipulative. Honestly, they're so dark that it's not a good idea. Yeah, I could say that she's a display. When you start talking about it. Yeah. It's gonna go to a place when you're talking about these movies.

And I'm gonna say for the record, like Mikey and Nicky is a dark movie. Uh this might be a controversial opinion. I think Heartbreak Kid is a darker movie. Darker. I I couldn't stop thinking that after I watched it because there's just there is it's it's a comedy and it's it's not it's funny. It's so cruel. But it's so cruel. I mean, it's just yeah, beyond. Charles Bruce. You just know you just know when Sybil Shepherd turns up in a movie, something terrible is gonna happen. Like, I'm sorry.

Everything goes sideways. Men men lose their ever living minds if you're gonna be able to do it. Men lose their fucking minds with Civil Shepherd. And I look, uh Last Picture Show, I get it. I do. But it's ridiculous. Come on, Travis Binkle, get your shit together. I know, seriously. You really fucked that up, didn't he? Uh yeah. No, we've done we've done two Civil Shepherd movies, Taxi Driver and Last Picture Show, and that's almost reasonable to do the third one.

She's very good in the hepherd kid, but my God, Charles Broden. I I've always loved Charles Broden, but my respect for him after seeing that movie, that he took that role on is amazing because that is a tough role. And I mean, just I mean, it takes a lot to be that much of a dick in a movie. It really does. Yeah, yeah. A worm of a person. A worm. Yeah, just a terrible human being.

Uh anyway, so Delane May next week, Nick, Mikey Nicki, or we'll do something directed by John Cass, something involving John Cassavetes. What exactly we will figure out. But in the meantime, Christina, again, thank you so much. Thank you, everyone, for listening, and uh we'll see you all again next week. Bye-bye.